Leadership · The leadership behind transformation
The real role of the executive sponsor in transformation
By Isabella Brusati
A transformation can have an approved business case, a capable programme team and an engaged sponsor—and still struggle to change how the organisation works.
The difficulty is often found in the space between formal support and the decisions that make adoption possible. A sponsor endorses the programme. But who resolves the competing priorities? Who gives managers permission to stop doing something? Who acts when the evidence challenges the agreed story?
These are leadership responsibilities. A change team can make them visible and support the response. It cannot exercise the sponsor’s authority on the sponsor’s behalf.
Methods matter. So does the judgment behind them.
The Financial Times article “Turmoil prompts fresh teaching on change management” provides a useful starting point. HEC Paris’s summary describes business schools responding to continuous disruption with more adaptive, reflective approaches and a stronger emphasis on questioning leadership assumptions.
My reading of the implication for practice is that structured methods need leaders who can use them thoughtfully. A stakeholder map, readiness assessment or communications plan can help organise the work. None removes the need to interpret conflicting evidence, make difficult choices or reconsider an assumption.
This is not evidence that coaching alone produces successful transformation. Nor is it an argument for abandoning disciplined change management. Reflection becomes commercially useful when it changes what leaders decide, resource and reinforce.
Own the trade-offs that the programme cannot resolve.
Consider a hypothetical organisation introducing a new operating model. Managers are asked to release experienced staff for design workshops while maintaining the same service targets. Attendance falls. The programme reports “low engagement”.
A sponsor could ask for stronger communications. A more useful first response would be to examine the workload conflict. Is the organisation genuinely making room for the change? Which priority takes precedence, and who has the authority to say so?
The answer may require temporary cover, a revised target or a smaller implementation scope. These choices have consequences. That is precisely why sponsorship matters: the person accountable for the outcome must help resolve tensions that sit beyond the programme’s remit.
Make it possible to tell you what is not working.
Leadership visibility is not simply attendance at launch events. It is also the experience people have when they bring inconvenient information to the sponsor.
If every concern is interpreted as negativity, reports can become reassuring while operational problems remain unresolved. If challenge is welcomed but nothing happens afterwards, people may stop raising it. Candour needs both a receptive response and a credible route to action.
An effective sponsor distinguishes between a concern that requires investigation, a decision that needs escalation and a constraint that must be accepted transparently. Listening does not mean agreeing with every objection. It means understanding enough to make a defensible decision.
Stay accountable beyond the milestone.
Go-live shows that a system or process has been introduced. It does not, by itself, show that people can use it confidently, that managers reinforce it or that the intended business change is taking hold.
Before implementation, agree what adoption should look like in everyday work. Depending on the change, useful evidence might include whether decisions follow the new governance, whether old workarounds persist, or whether managers can explain and support the new responsibilities. Select measures that fit the actual outcome; avoid treating attendance or log-ins as a complete account of adoption.
Make ownership after go-live explicit. Otherwise, an unresolved organisational problem can become nobody’s responsibility just as the programme team begins to leave.
The executive move
At your next sponsor review, ask three questions:
- Which unresolved decision requires my authority?
- What are we asking people to do without giving them the capacity or conditions to do it?
- What evidence would challenge our current assessment of adoption?
Choose one issue, name its decision owner and agree when the response will be reviewed. The value lies in the follow-through.
A question to take away: Where are you expecting your change team to solve a problem that only leadership can resolve?
Further reading: Andrew Jack, “Turmoil prompts fresh teaching on change management”, Financial Times, 5 June 2026 (subscription may be required). Source context: HEC Paris’s summary. The practical recommendations and hypothetical example above are my interpretation, not findings attributed to the FT article.